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Is Catholic groups’ lawsuit against health law political?

On Monday, 43 Catholic organizations filed 12 federal lawsuits seeking to overturn the Obama administration’s recent mandate that most employer-provided health insurance cover birth control and sterilization. The plaintiffs include several dioceses, social services providers, and educational institutions, including the University of Notre Dame, one of America’s top Catholic colleges.

There are key groups, however, sitting out the lawsuit including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which told Commonweal that its “concerns are addressed in the lawsuits that were filed,” and the Catholic Health Association, which is still in negotiations with the Obama administration.

At issue is the fact that Catholic hospitals, schools, and charities will have to include copay-free birth control in their health insurance offerings, in violation of the church’s ban on contraception. That ban, however, is widely ignored as 99 percent of Catholic women admit to using birth control at some point in their lives.

The U.S. Catholic bishops rejected the Obama compromise — insurance will pay for the birth control, not the institutions — because some groups self-insure, and the rest still have to “facilitate” activities they see as “intrinsically immoral.” Also at issue is the Obama administration’s decision to treat Catholic institutions separately than parishes and dioceses, which are exempt from the mandate.

The coordinated lawsuits ask federal courts to say that the contraception rules violate religious institutions’ First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The vast majority of the nation’s 195 dioceses did not, however, go to court. Many bishops, notably the church leadership in California, saw the litigation as premature. They are upset that the lawsuits were brought without a broader discussion among the entire membership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and wanted to delay action until the Conference’s June meeting.

A series of events – including the Vatican’s rebuke of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious encouraged by right-wing American bishops — have angered more progressive Catholics who want to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right.

., broke the silence on his side Tuesday in an interview with Kevin Clarke of the Jesuit magazine America. Blaire expressed concern that some groups “very far to the right” are turning the controversy over the contraception rules into “an anti-Obama campaign.”

“I think there are different groups that are trying to co-opt this and make it [a] into political issue, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif told Jesuit magazine America, “and that’s why we need to have a deeper discussion as bishops.”

What do you think? Are the lawsuits political? Click the link below to take our poll.